Yeah, so last Sunday I blithely announced just how the fruit basket turnover would go as birds were released and moved around, and of course, none of it panned out the way I’d intended, so nobody’s where I’d planned—aside from the releases, that is. Typical…
Before getting to the releases, last week was loosely bookended with the arrivals of two blue jays. Wednesday’s jay was a true nestling and adorable as only baby jays can be.
Before getting to the releases, last week was loosely bookended with the arrivals of two blue jays. Wednesday’s jay was a true nestling and adorable as only baby jays can be.
Friday’s jay was *thisfar* from fledging—if he’d been able to stay nested for another couple of days he could have properly fledged. However, he and the younger jay have bonded nicely—young jays are neat in that respect—and are doing beautifully together.
The only other new intake, early in the week, was a young female sharpie who apparently just had some minor head trauma; she was released Saturday, along with the red tail and both red shoulders.
No video of the red shoulder releases; they were in the same box and shot out in different directions. But I did track them down by listening to the nuthatches in the woods raising Cain, so I managed a couple of photos of them post-release.
The red tail didn’t hang around for post-release photos; I barely managed the video of his release.
The plan last Sunday was to move the screeches into the mini-pen once the red tail was released; the brown thrashers, grackle and flicker needed to be outside sooner, though. The flicker self-released, not ideal but always a risk using a pen not really designed for songbirds while the songbird flight remains out of commission. The other three are more content to keep the handouts going.
So the screeches went into a slightly larger box for another week or so, bless their impatient little hearts.
The mourning doves, as I predicted last Sunday, aren’t even recognizable as the same little “cactus fuzz” babies! They’re starting to flap those wings in the nest, too.
The Coop with the black eye is self-feeding entirely now, whole mice, and in the raptor flight as of today. I’d really planned to hold off and place him in the mini-pen after the screeches but he’s a Coop. He was literally bouncing off the walls of his box, so…
And the original plan was for the barred owl to go in the raptor flight, rather than the Coop, but the barred refuses to eat whole mice. As long as they have to be cut up, they’ll attract ants too quickly in the raptor flight, so…picky eaters have to stay inside a while longer. But look at how this baby has grown!
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